The cashier and his two escorts departed, and the foreman took a pile of coins out of his pouch and counted them, bemoaning why Gaius Theodorus had not spoken up in time. He had a huge amount of respect for Joseph ben Nahum and the whole Sanhedrin and the higher-ups! Why didn’t Gaius Theodorus speak up before this?
He pressed the coins into Uri’s palm.
At least he registered my name, reflected Uri as he stuffed the coins into his loincloth.
The foreman had urgent business to attend to, so he hurried off. The workmen chortled. Uri sat back down, leaned his back against a wall and looked at the fountain, which was now operating. The sculpture portrayed fish clinging to each other like a bunch of grapes, with the water spurting from the topmost fish.
Judas took a seat beside him.
“You’ve got a big mouth,” he said. “I’d never have thought so from the look of you.”
“It was big,” Uri croaked.
Judas laughed.
“How much money were you given?”
“I don’t know,” he answered. “My wages for the week.”
“And how much is that?” Judas asked.
The others gathered around, sitting or stretching out.
Uri tried to recollect what they had said about this back in Beth Zechariah.
“A drachma a day,” is what came to mind.
The workers laughed.
“Only the very best get that much,” one of them said.
“I’m a very good worker,” Uri whispered with conviction.
That raised a laugh.
“So, how much did you get?” Judas pushed. “Let’s see.”
Uri stood up and took the coins from his loincloth. The workers tittered. Uri spread out the small change, a mix of silver and coppers. He had no idea what they were or what they were worth. He arranged the identical ones next to each other.
Judas slowly counted them up, doing a careful job as he had nothing else to do.
“Three ma’ahs, one tropik, two tresiths, twelve issars, two aspers, four pondions, one hundred and twelve prutahs…” He looked up. “Do you think that’s about seven drachmas?”
The workers were quickly rolling on the ground with laughter; a couple of them traced out the numbers in the dust and became absorbed in adding them up.
“Half a zuz, plus half a zuz, plus a quarter zuz, plus a half zuz, plus two fifths of a zuz, plus one third of a zuz, plus roughly three fifths of a zuz… That can’t come to more than three zuz, man!”
Uri sat again; the workers crowed.
“One drachma is how many zuz?” Uri asked, his ears starting to redden.
The workers roared with laughter, still rolling on the ground. Even the painter popped his head out from the upper floor, curious to find out what everyone found so amusing.
“One drachma is how many zuz? Lord Almighty! You’re asking how many zuz in a drachma?”
Naturally, one drachma was one zuz, and the foreman had handed over less than half of Uri’s weekly wage! Menachem had dipped into his pouch and unerringly handed over half! Menachem wouldn’t make a mistake with something like that! He has a good feel for it; he’s had plenty of practice!
After they had amused themselves, Judas fished a piece of papyrus out from somewhere and wrote down the more important exchange rates for Uri to memorize. Uri thanked him and bundled the coins back into his loincloth.
They had laughed at him, but not all that much; they had accepted him, because he had dared to speak up.
The breakfast, supper, and lunch, which Judith also delivered to the workers, cost altogether two-fifths of a zuz per day, and the use of the room, another one-fifth per day. She took all of the money Uri had, did some lengthy calculations in her head, and gave back some of it, not a lot.
“So you have money after all!” she said, raising her index finger. “I knew it, you dark horse!”
Uri stuffed the remaining coins back into his loincloth.
Two days later unsightly, itchy red spots covered his testicles and the bases of his thighs. He and wealth did not get along well, he concluded. Early the next morning, while the others were still sleeping, he scratched a place for the coins in the ground, not far from the big holes that had been dug as a privy at the bottom of the garden. He hoped the money was not going to be made irretrievably unclean. He washed the loincloth thoroughly and hung it out on a tree branch so that it would be dry by evening. That was a mistake, because come evening the loincloth was gone. Never mind, he told himself; at least it won’t chafe my balls.
He was paid the next week’s wages in full. He had seen other workers shoving off without anyone caring, so, without asking for permission to leave work, he went that same day to the Upper City market, where he bought himself a new loincloth and a new pouch. He put the money in the pouch and tied it to his waist under his long shirt. There was a long stretch along the row of stalls selling second-hand goods; he looked around, thinking that this was probably where his tasseled blanket had ended up not so long ago. He didn’t see that particular one, but he did see others; however, he did not buy one, there being no point as it was now so warm at night. He did buy an ointment for every imaginable skin complaint; it did not come from laserpicium, because that was unknown in this part of the world, but it was not balsam either: he had smelled it. It was sold in small jars, five tresiths a jar, which was expensive, because that was five-eighths of a zuz, as he now knew, but he could allow himself the expense. He put a jar in his pouch and strolled contentedly back to the City of David.
That evening he paid for all the coming week’s meals and added what was left, which now came to a tidy sum, to the coins he had already stashed. He was delighted to have come across such a safe bank in the land of Judaea. If he ever met Simon the Magus again, he would recommend it.
Uri spent a lot of time sitting on the upper floor, gazing at the activities of Hiskiyya, the painter, while the other workers on the ground floor fretted or, in the Roman style, played games of chance, which are forbidden to Jews. Hiskiyya had by now finished with the queen’s bedroom and had begun on Izates’s room. There was no one pushing him; he just liked working. Uri asked if he might try his hand at painting one of the figures, but the painter was unwilling to let him. Uri tried arguing that if he messed anything up, Master Hiskiyya would be able to correct it easily, but the painter insisted that it was wrong to waste costly pigments. The next day Uri appeared with a piece of papyrus and some chalk, which he had bought in the nearer market in the Lower City; he asked if he might copy the figures the master had already painted. Hiskiyya permitted it, so Uri stepped up close to the wall, squatted, drew, stood up, stepped close to the wall, squatted back down, drew… He spent the rest of the day contentedly doing that.
“Well, I never!” Hiskiyya said that afternoon, wagging his head. “That’s not bad at all… Pity about your being semi-blind, because you could have made a wonderful painter…”
Uri would have been happy to go on drawing, but the Almighty again had other plans in store for him than his making progress in that craft. The next day the sheets of mosaic for which they had been waiting for weeks finally arrived.
The crates, lying in straw and themselves lined inside with straw, were lifted carefully from the big carts. There were sixteen long, bulky crates, four on each cart. The foreman jumped around nervously, watching each crate get opened. A count was made, noted by the foreman, of the marvelous square-shaped, painted, and fired tiles and the smaller bits that would have to be laid around them to make the pattern. Once that had been done, all the pieces were carefully placed back in the crates.
The foreman signed a papyrus to indicate that he had received the crates and their contents were without loss, after which the unloaded carts clattered off.